


think you've got it bass ackwards

by scrumbled



Series: Moonchild [3]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Hair Braiding, Merle Loves Angus But No One Has To Know That, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 20:58:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9090463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrumbled/pseuds/scrumbled
Summary: Without meaning to, Merle finds himself giving an impromptu hair-braiding lesson to Angus.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title's from letterkenny, which is a fuckin golden show let me tell you

Merle absolutely cannot fucking stand Angus McDonald. He hates the boy’s snotty enthusiasm, his bright-eyed wonder at the shit world they live in. Every time Angus’s babyish face lights up in abject joy, Merle cannot help but think that  _ this is a child of war _ , that Angus should not be as god damn happy as he is all the time. He’s growing up around soldiers, around people who murder evildoers and steal shit for a living.

Angus is an enigma, a child working for what amounts to little more than a militia. Why was he even  _ allowed _ ? The kid’s  _ fucking ten years old _ , and yet he is a deeply integral part of an organization bent on saving the universe. 

Sometimes, Angus beams his childish, gap-toothed smile, and it reminds Merle of Mookie so deeply that it hurts. Pan almighty, he fucking despises Angus McDonald.

This is what he tells himself as he agrees to teach the boy how to braid.

“Get on up here, then,” he grumbles as he resolutely does not help Angus on to the couch in their living room. He rolls his eyes hard enough that it moves his whole head, untying his beard from the intricate designs that he’d worked on so hard that very morning. He removes the beads entwined within and shoves them in a pocket and finger-combs his beard out, mumbling the whole time about “what kind of shit parents don’t teach their fuckin’ kid to braid? What kid doesn’t go to fuckin’... summer camp with their shitty friends and learn this basic-ass shit? Pan above save me.”

Angus, to his credit, simply looks expectant and pushes up his godsblessed glasses.

“Mmkay, kiddo, first thing is you need three chunks of hair. Even ones.” Merle sections off three parts of his beard, gesturing for Angus to do the same on the other side. “Even ones, I said. Same amount of hair in each chunk.”

Angus nods solemnly, a crinkle forming in between his eyebrows as he fixes the chunks of hair. Merle huffs a sigh. “Wrap your middle finger around the middle section. Take one of the outside sections and put it in the middle.  _ Shit _ , kid, don’t pull so hard. Gotta save the moneymaker.”

Angus lets up and frowns. “How’m I supposed to keep up with three strands when I only have two hands?”

“Well fuck, kid, I don’t know, I’m trying to teach you on my own goddamn face, you’re just gonna have to find a way!”

Angus flinches back at the outburst, dropping the pieces of hair, and Merle actually feels sad for a second before he clamps a lid down on that shit and nips it in the fuckin’ bud, no thank you  _ sir _ . Merle stands, quickly tying off his beard in a sloppy horsetail, and strides out of the room as fast as his little legs can carry him.

“Come on, Agnes. I don’t got all day,” he lobs over his shoulder at the dumbfounded child he left on the couch. He hears scrambling, and then Angus is jogging to catch up, even though he doesn’t have to jog once he actually reaches Merle because the fucker’s got long-ass gangly legs. 

_ Pan better give me a fuckin… promotion, or a commendation, or something,  _  Merle thinks as he thumbs on his stone of farspeech. “Hey Taako, come in, shitbag,” he snarls, aggrieved beyond belief that he’s actually taking time out of his fucking day to help the ridiculous mouth breather who was now easily outpacing him,  _ damn that ten-year-old energy. _

“Fuck’s up?” comes through the stone.

“Hell are you?”

“Maybe ask nicer and I’ll tell you, Krampus,” Taako drawls, but Merle can hear the faint sounds of metal hitting metal in the background.

“Fuck off, ass-basket. I’ll be at the training room soon.  _ Stay there _ ,” he hisses, changing course.

Taako laughs. “Damn, you are on a rampage, huh? Guess I’ll fuckle my seatbelt.”

Merle turns off the stone and swivels to see Angus in awe, smiling fit to burst, both his hands on his cheeks like he’s just seen something adorable. 

“What’s wrong with you?” he spits, pissed now.

“You two really love each other, huh?” Angus asks, cheeks glowing.

“Pan save me from this  _ bullshit _ ,” Merle says in lieu of replying. He redoubles his efforts to get to the training room as fast as physically possible without running. Angus, the  _ rat bastard _ , keeps up with no visible strain. The boy giggles the whole rest of the way to the training room.

Merle busts open the door, yelling “Taako, you here?” into the open space.

“Yeah, shit, ‘m coming,” they hear from somewhere off to the side. Taako slides into view, dusting his hands off. “Whatcha need, pops?”

“Pops!? I  _ told  _ you—” Merle breaks off and rolls his eyes. It’s a lost cause at this point. “Fuckin’—this one doesn’t know how to braid, and he roped me into teaching him.”

One of Taako’s sculpted eyebrows lifts. “Why can’t you teach him on your beard?”

“Tried that. It’s impossible when I’m doing it backwards.”

Taako nods. “And I say again, whatcha need me for?”

“You’re my replacement beard, so sit your bony ass down and let us get to work on that rat’s nest of yours. You got a brush?”

Taako looks down at them, his mouth scrunched up. He’s clearly about to reject them, but just as he opens his mouth, Angus cuts in and says, “Please, sir?”

Pan damn him, Merle needs to learn how to do puppy eyes like that. It’s like watching a fantasy Sarah McLachlan commercial. Merle himself almost feels compelled by the face.

Taako sighs. “Sure, boychik. I have a brush. Let me get a cushion or something, though, because this bony ass can’t sit on the ground for long.” He leaves for a moment, and Merle sighs.

“I don’t know how you hold so much influence over him,” he says tiredly.

Angus doesn’t respond right away. He takes a sharp breath, like he’s going to speak up, but he lets the air go without a word. It’s only when Taako reappears, a cushion and a chair levitating behind him, that Angus manages to say, “Thank you, Merle, sir.”

“Don’t mention it, kid. Ever.” Merle meant it to sound a lot gruffer than it came out. Fuck it, though, right?

Taako sits on the cushion, and then sets the chair in front of him so he can set his arms on it and rest his head on his arms. “Short enough for you boys?” he mumbles as he settles.

“Fuck off,” Merle replies, just as quietly. “Gimme the brush.”

Taako fishes though his giant-ass purse as Merle and Angus move so they’re behind him. He hands the brush to Angus, who looks lost until Merle huffs and takes it from him. He undoes Taako’s bun and brushes through his hair gently, setting Angus to work on the larger knots with his fingers until all of the hair is untangled and smooth. 

“Mmkay, so as I was saying earlier, you take three equal pieces of hair. Gentle, now. Don’t want to yank all his hair out just yet.”

Slowly, he works through the steps of a braid, which is monumentally easier now that he’s not having to demonstrate it backwards. Angus learns quick (surprise surprise), so once he’s got the hang of it Merle lets go of his piece and begins to rebraid his beard into the complicated pattern it was in earlier that morning. He spreads out his beard jewelry on the ground, carefully winding each piece into its rightful place.

Merle looks up a long while later to see that Angus has finished plaiting all of Taako’s hair into varying sizes of relatively good braids, and is watching him.

“Why do you braid your beard?” Angus asks, softly, as if he’s afraid to ruin the moment.

Merle surprises himself by answering truthfully. “Helps keep it out of the way. It’s hard to keep your shit clean when you’re fighting disgusting goop-monsters who spew gross shit out their pores. The braids make it easier. And they make it less tangly, which is nice.”

“And the beads? Do they mean anything?”

“They mean… a lot of things. This one means that I’m of the Highchurch family, this one says we’re beach dwarves. This one—uhh, I forgot what it means,” which is obviously a lie but Angus knows when he’s getting exclusive information and he doesn’t want to prod. “This one… is just pretty, this one is agate, for protection. Magnus carved these two—the hammer is for him, the umbrella is for Taako.”

“That’s nice,” Angus says, smiling softly. “I like that.”

Merle clears his throat, uncomfortable with how much he’d unintentionally revealed. “Uhh,” he says, to cover his ass, “d’you want to learn how to fantasy French braid?”

Angus nods vigorously, almost knocking his glasses off in his fervor.

“Okay. So you start the same way you start a regular-ass braid, but every time you bring the outside piece to the middle, you add some hair from the rest of his head.”

He unbraids some of Taako’s hair to demonstrate, earning a bone-deep sigh from the elf. Angus chuckles and follows suit. He manages to brilliantly fuck up his first attempt, but after a couple more tries he’s got the basic idea down. Taako yawns hugely after a particularly successful go of it. Both Angus and Merle laugh, but Taako just smiles sleepily at them both from where his head is pillowed on top of his elbow. “‘S… ‘s nice. Feels good,” he mutters. 

Merle grins. “Angus, you ever heard of fantasy Dutch braids?”

They spend another half an hour in there, lazily braiding and undoing and redoing Taako’s hair into complicated arrangements. It’s nice, to just sit there, with no pressing world-ending catastrophe looming over their heads. It’s nice to pretend that they’re ok, that they aren’t on the goddamn moon working for a secretive intelligence organization.

Their banter is frighteningly natural. At one point, Taako actually falls asleep, and it’s just Merle and Angus having a real conversation for the first time ever. And, to his mixed horror and relief, the words come easy. Angus is easy to talk to, and he doesn’t mind the long gaps Merle is prone to leave in the conversation. Merle talks, Angus listens, and Pan  _ damn _ it slap him silly and fuck him  _ sideways _ , Merle’s starting to kind of… enjoy the kid’s company.

He stiffens up when he realizes that. No. Horseshit he is. Horse _ shit _ he likes the boy. Fuck if he’s going to relent to this kid’s nonstop enthusiasm. He can’t get involved, not now, not ever. It would be… too painful. Wouldn’t be worth the inevitable heartbreak.

Ah, shit, but he’s got himself between a rock troll and a stone golem, huh? He’d slipped up, let himself talk to the boy, let himself start to  _ like _ him—

Fuck.

Merle absolutely cannot fucking stand Angus McDonald. Hates him. Loathes him. Despises every second of the time spent with him.

This is what Merle tells himself as he gathers Angus up into a careful hug and grumbles, “Good job, you monkey fuck.”

This is what Merle tells himself as Angus beams his gap-toothed smile and says, “Thank you, you sad, strange little man. You have my pity, sir.”

This is what Merle tells himself as he smiles, pride warming his heart, and this is what he tells himself even as he makes plans to do this again sometime.

**Author's Note:**

> merle's a grumpy fuck and i love him. also, last i checked, there were only 3 fics in the merle highchurch & angus mcdonald tag, which is a heinous crime against humanity


End file.
